


Coming Home

by Ghelik



Series: Life after the Mountain [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Isolation, Post-Mount Weather, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, two headed horse, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 19:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7235575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last year she celebrated her birthday blowing up three hundred grounders. This year…. is most definitively not an improvement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

Last year she celebrated her birthday setting three hundred grounders on fire. This year…. is most definitively not an improvement.

  
Roan is bleeding all over the place, and their horses are exhausted. But the hunting party is still gaining on them, she can feel it.  
  


There’s really not much point in denying that going into Azgeda territory was a bad idea. From all the grounder-clans Clarke's met through her travels the ice nation is the most violent, most unwelcoming one.

 

Then again maybe it is all related to the fact that Roan failed to mention he had been exiled and has a kill order on his head - said kill order tied to a juicy recompense. So juicy, in fact, she's considering just killing him and going to the queen herself to collect.  Or maybe that’s just her skaikru brain, and fucking grounder logic works differently. Who knows!

  
Roan groans, nearly falling off his horse.

  
This is not good. As in Not Good, in capital letters from how not good everything is.

  
She manages to catch him before he falls, but the horses stop running. She kicks the sides of her horse, but it doesn’t react, just twist one of his heads – the one with the floppy mane and the too-big eyes, she calls Sonja in her head. The other one is half deceased, and his angry stare reminds her of Bellamy, so –in her head - she calls it Bell. The horses’ real name is Thunderclap, it had been a gift from one village chieftain for healing his son, back when she was traveling alone.

  
"Come on," she whispers, looking over her shoulder.

  
She thinks she can hear their hunters, but a moment later it’s gone.

  
Roan finally manages to fall off his horse, and she curses colorfully.

  
His white mare lays down next to his master, Thunderclap walks until he can reach some of the low-hanging leaves on a tree, Bell’s head fixing her with an angry stare while Sonja’s eats.

  
"You must keep going, Clarke."

  
"You must shut up," she pushes his blood-soaked shirt out of the way.

  
Dark inflamed veins surround the wound. Roan breathes heavily, choking half the times he inhales. He spits blood. The wound is infected, and she needs a fucking break. Also, a hospital would be helpful.

  
"It's no big deal," she lies, and he coughs up a laugh.

  
"You’re still not good at lying, Clarke."

  
She looks around, and her heart skips a beat. She hadn’t noticed how far they’ve come since they started running from the Azgeda Warriors a week ago.

  
"That is Mount Weather."

  
He looks up towards the mountain she’s pointing at.  
  


"Feeling nostalgic, Wanheada?"

  
The blonde fixes him with a stare that would have made a lesser man quake in his boots. He just laughs and groans in pain.  
  


"My people live near Mount Weather. My mother can help you."

  
He gives her a skeptic look.  
  


"You are not going to die because of a stray arrow."

  
"This one won’t be on you, Clarke."

  
She presses her lips together. They cannot keep rushing the horses through the forest, and she cannot carry Roan on her own. But maybe they can walk there. She calls Thunderclap to her and talks to Bell’s head, which is the more reasonable of the two. Finally, it seems to sigh and lays down for her to roll Roan onto his back.

  
"So, my horse you can leave behind," he mumbles against Thunderclap’s neck, while she unfastens his horse’s bridle and shoulders the saddle.

  
Bell’s head snorts, letting her pull at its reigns, walking behind her. Sonja’s head's dozing off.

  
They make their way slowly towards Camp Jaha or Arkadia- which is how skaikru calls their city these days.

  
Clarke hadn’t thought she would ever come back. Her gut still twists uncomfortably whenever she thinks of the Ark and… everything. Since she left and became a wanderer, she’s been trying to earn some measure of forgiveness for what she did. She stayed alone for a while. For a short, beautiful month she thought she could just build a new life on the ashes of her enemies. Then she was alone again, at some point she noticed she was inadvertently following this strange storyteller from village to village. He told stories of Wanheda, most of them not accurate or even real, but they spoke of the ugly things she had done, and it felt necessary because she might forget. The storyteller – currently bleeding out all over Thunderclap's back - also told of things Wanheda had done since becoming a wanderer.

  
“ _She just appeared and slaughtered the thieves saving the lives of the children who would have been sold into slavery_.” It hadn’t really been like that, but people seemed to enjoy his version more. Of course, Roan noticed she was following him before she even knew she was. One’s not a grounder if one doesn’t notice stuff like that. They started traveling together, it seemed the sensible thing to do. Not because she couldn’t carry her own loneliness or anything.

  
He taught her trigadeslang, to hunt and to tell stories. 

His are still the better ones, and he’s usually the storyteller when they stop by a village. She draws and gives medicine, helping with wounds and illness whenever she can.  
  


And at some point – when everything seemed to be ok - Roan decided it was a good time to go back home to the Ice Nation.

  
She hopes her return to her own people will be a little less hostile. Clarke can deal with hostility towards her. She can understand if she’s not welcome and she won’t stay. It’s not like she misses them or would want to stay, which she doesn’t.

  
Her stomach twists again.  
  


The sun is setting. Arkadia looks magnificent: glinting in the twilight, with a great fence fizzling and humming – she hadn’t thought she would ever miss the mechanic sounds of the Ark until she was huddled in a little cave in the dead of winter feeling incredibly alone and incredibly lost. 

Her little party is nearly a hundred feet away from the crackling fence when a shot startles the evening quiet. It’s a warning – that or Bellamy’s boys are terrible shots. 

 

She raises her voice:

  
"I am," and the words snag in her throat. She clears it and tries again, "I need to speak to Abby Griffin!"

  
There’s silence, and she steps closer. Her legs are trembling, from exhaustion, probably. Maybe it’s hunger. She’s not sure anymore.  
  


"That’s close enough!" shouts a voice she doesn’t recognize. "State your business!"

  
She looks at Roan, he gives her a weak smile. So she pulls what he calls her 'Wanheda face' on, straightens her spine and speaks loud and clear.

 

"My name is Clarke Griffin from Skaikru! I need to talk to Abby Griffin!"

  
There’s a moment of silence, the fence’s fizzling stops for a moment and the doors open. Suddenly, her mother is there, as are Kane and some assorted guards. Her knees are locked in place, and she cannot walk. Cannot enter that gate. She looks for… Where are her people? Who are all these strangers?

  
' _Pull yourself together_!', growls a voice in her head and Clarke walks closer. When she crosses the fence, she feels like puking.  
  


Her mom is there, pressing her against her chest and it’s so sudden she has to stop her hands from pulling her knife out. There’s no time for this.

  
"Roan needs help," Clarke manages to choke out around the knot in her throat.

  
Why is there so little air in here?  
  


"Please," and she sounds desperate.

  
That’s not good. People who are desperate can be manipulated and pushed around, and she should get a grip on everything, but there’s a prickling behind her eyes. Roan is a good guy, and she cannot let him die, too.

  
Abby looks at her strangely, caressing her face and wiping her thumbs over her cheeks. She looks older, her skin darker than she remembers, more lines around her eyes and mouth. Her hands are very warm and Clarke feels like curling up at her feet and sleep.

  
But she can’t.  
  


Abby kisses her brow and goes over to Thunderclap. Bell’s head fixes the new human with his trademarked Angry Stare. Sonja’s head is still down, eyes closed.

  
Abby is talking to someone, but her words not actually register.  
  


"He was shot by Azgeda warriors. I already checked for poison, but I think it’s infected."

  
It’s easier to think in terms of medicine. The blonde drags herself behind the group into what’s left of the Ark and shudders. It feels like she’s never left like she woke up from a long nap. Everything looks and feels slightly different. 

 

Clarke feels claustrophobic, but follows everyone into the Med Bay anyway and sits on an empty cot. An elder woman she doesn’t know checks her and stitches her knee and shoulder. When she tries to take her backpack from Clarke slams her hand into the woman’s trachea without thinking and feels horrified when she sees her on the ground.

  
Someone pulls her down onto the cot, and she struggles when they tie her down. She’s screaming when someone jabs a needle into the side of her throat. After that she only remembers seeing Roan, his face turned towards her.

  
Her brain supplies her with a few terrifying images of what will happen when she’s awake: they’ll kill her because she ran away and she’s a traitor and when did she think it would be a good idea to come back?


End file.
